The Earnestness of Being Fat!

It’s not funny how the word ‘fat’ is the heaviest word in the English language. It carries a load with it, that is difficult to get rid off , and has the power to crush even the strongest spirits under it.

I am fat. I know it. Everyone around me knows it. But it is not something that anyone likes to bring  up. There is so much hypocrisy about the whole thing that it actually sickens me. It’s not as if I need a crane to move me out of the house, or that every time I sit on a bench, I need to worry about its safety. But so strong is the piercing gaze from the eyes of the viewer, I end up worrying about the bench, even if I know, that it is completely secure under me and totally able to lift my weight.

I know being fat means you are not healthy, that you are putting your body up for a lot of diseases in the future. But it is also not as if it is the only sign of someone being sick. Its not as if the thin ones are super fit and healthy. There are some people who eat all the junk in the world, but don’t seem to put on the weight. Who’s to say that their cholesterol levels are lower than mine? Weight and cholesterol are not always directly proportional. But most people tend to think so. And everyone who ever hounds me for losing the excess flab to get healthier, why don’t they nag the thin ones to eat better, or the lazy ones to get off the couch and do some physical activity for a change.

I am an active person, maybe not super enthusiastic about boring workouts but I like to work around the house. I clean up the house constantly, eat light, monitor every bite that enters my mouth. So it hurts even more when a pizza , pasta and cheese guzzling skinny person tells me you should take care of your health. It is also equally annoying  when an equally fat or maybe fatter person passes a comment on my weight and how I should reduce it. It’s the constant jibes, the constant nagging by both categories – the thinnies who think it’s alright to hog all the time and the fatties who think they don’t have a problem, that makes taking a seat on a wooden bench, feel like climbing the Everest.

There are many lifestyle choices that people make, that are unhealthy. But why is it that being fat is the only thing that catches the attention of  everyone? So much so , that each and every gym is a money making machine these day!

The fact is that no matter how much people say that it is not the looks that matter, but your health, it is actually in fact about how you look. Just because someone’s body mechanism is such that he or she does  not experience an expansion in the waistline, it makes them eligible to escape judgements being passed around by everyone. And just because someone is unlucky to have been handed down a slow metabolic rate by their gene pool, he is a definite candidate for ridicule.

Please don’t get me wrong and think that I am so oblivious to the health hazards that all I gather from the constant reminders to lose weight is that people are shallow and don’t like to see someone happy in their form. I am fully aware of all the pitfalls . I am also fully aware that the kind of lifestyle I have, I really need to bend backwards to  follow a fixed routine of healthy eating and exercise. But, I guess not many can deny that it is kind of impossible to predict work hours in the MNC work culture. Even if I try my best to maintain a routine, an urgent release or an urgent issue, easily breaks into it and I end up ordering food in office at 11 p.m .

So who is to be blamed? Work, genes or a lack of routine ? I guess they all play an equally annoying part in making someone gain weight while their neighbor hogs on a juicy tandoori chicken. But for me, the biggest culprit would have to be all the jokes being cracked about it. There are so many people trying to take a jab at you and your weight, even when you are only slightly plump, that you end up binge eating in order to comfort yourself, thinking it’s not going to hurt you anymore because you are fat already. I guess once you give into it, once you let the fat-joke cracker get inside your head, you lose the game right there. And I guess that’s what has happened with most of the people of my clan. We have either accepted it and decided to live on as we please, or we have built such a thick wall of ignorance that we see others as fat but look at ourselves as just plump. Neither attitude is right but I guess it is important to just go with what you feel is right for you.

I don’t know what this post is meant for. I don’t know if I am trying to reason the causes out for myself or trying to help someone who ends up reading this. Or maybe I am just trying to send out this message into the void telling the thinnies to beware, because cholesterol is a sneaky bitch!